Transistor structures may include gate electrodes and contact electrodes to route electrical energy to or from respective gates and source/drain regions. In some cases, patterning processes used to fabricate such gate electrodes and contact electrodes may result in material of the contact electrodes being deposited in a gate plug region, which may result in defects such as transistor gate short defects. The challenges of shrinking alignment and critical dimension tolerances of these features may further exacerbate such defects between material of gate electrodes and/or contact electrodes.